Diveyede – Pale Moonlight

diveyede

Alternative hip hop artist Diveyede’s latest single, Pale Moonlight, is taken from his upcoming EP There is no cure//They will be the death of me. The production is pretty solid, but not so great that it takes away from the raw, organic feel of the recording. If production is too good, sometimes it can commercializes out the avant-garde authenticity. Diveyede’s style is somewhat unorthodox in that it blends spoken word slam poetry with conventional hip hop musicality. There are even some emo elements here. Pale Moonlight is filled with angst and displays a willingness on the part of the artist to confront his own sanity and vulnerability. There is a kind of madness to it all (“This is my Van Gogh!” he shouts despairingly.) More importantly, Diveyede displays a self awareness that is uncommon in these genres. The end result is that Pale Moonlight avoids the trappings of superficial posturing and hip hop cliches, managing to be something genuinely experimental.

For more info:
https://soundcloud.com/diveyede
https://www.facebook.com/diveyede

Life in Plastic, It’s Fantastic.

aquabarbiegirl2

Ahh yes, I’m driving down Scottsdale Rd in the fall of 1998 in my ’93 Saturn (soon to be totaled while parked in Santa Monica less than 2 years later.) I’m wearing a yellow button down shirt from The Gap and sporting frosted tips. Or maybe I’m wearing a blue Tommy Hilfiger windbreaker semi-ironically. What song is playing on the radio? Well, it could be one of many songs actually. Perhaps it’s Harvey Danger’s Flagpole Sitta. Maybe it’s Barenaked Ladies’ One Week or if I’m lucky, Aqua’s Barbie Girl.

barbiegirllene

Yes I admit it, I loved this song. I was first alerted to it by friends that said it reminded them of my recordings, not that I ever made anything remotely as good as this, but I used to increase the pitch on my cassettes on 4 track to make my voice sound more indie and alternative, which my friends jokingly said made it sound like “that Barbie Girl song.” It brings back so many memories from a great time in the 90s. I used to think pop music was so shitty at the time, but we didn’t know how good we had it! Aqua’s Barbie Girl is actually a masterpiece, artistically, cinematically, aesthetically, musically, you name it.

seahorse

One of my favorite parts of the video is when Lene is getting her hair done and reading a cool looking (but fake) book titled My Little Sea Horse. Whenever I watch the video, I always think about how I wish that book actually existed and I could read it.

Life in plastic, it’s fantastic! Yes it was.

Good Boy Daisy – Too Hard to Love

goodboydaisy

I never heard of the (fairly well known) band, Good Boy Daisy, until I saw them featured on the cover of a local community college publication that I happened to pick up out of curiosity/boredom. Good Boy Daisy features the easily likable and charismatic sisters, Hallie and Dylinn Hayes. Other members include Molly Mashal, Jonathan Henderson and Seth Person. They claim to be influenced by a lot of 90’s grunge. My first impression of their sound was that while the female vocal style is similar to that of The Cranberries. It just has that 90’s alternative, subtly fluctuating pitch that one who lived through that era of music would instantly recognize. However, in this context, the actual backing music is much harder (especially as it breaks into the chorus,) almost more in line with Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine. They’re not a retro or throwback band though by any means. Their music ultimately is of a contemporary, post-grunge nature and will appeal to many different types of people.

The band apparently took its name from a line in the movie Guy Richie movie Snatch, a film I vaguely remember seeing at the then state-of-the-art but now sorta ghetto Arizona Mills movie theater in 2001. Good Boy Daisy is one of those bands that has an aura about them where they are hitting all the right marks, and you just know if they don’t manage to self destruct, get pregnant or get bored that they will succeed.

For more info:
http://www.goodboydaisy.com/
https://www.instagram.com/good_boy_daisy/

The Sky is Black and Blue Like a Battered Child – Ben Arzate

benarzate_poetry

For those that might be unfamiliar, Ben Arzate is well known in certain circles as a prolific reviewer of alternative literature and edgy political books. In fact, he may be the most prolific indie book reviewer in contemporary times. Yet, he manages to find the time between readings to author some lit of his own, such as his recent poetry chapbook, the sky is black and blue like a battered child.

At only 25 pages (with some poems only making up a fraction of a page,) it is a true chapbook. Though brief, the book somehow manages to retain enough fullness to pass as a complete work. As a minimalist, I appreciate this in a way others may not. It’s always a good sign though when a poetry book leaves you wanting more, which is the case here. Despite the mildly disturbing title, there is nothing particularly offensive in the book’s contents, save for a couple of lines (you’ll know them when you see them.) If there are observable themes in this work, they would seem to be loneliness, regret and despair…peppered with a touch of apathy.

I found it interesting that in several places, analog “tv static” (also known as white noise and famously depicted in the film Poltergeist) is referred to as being something desirable to watch (though it is unclear whether the author approves.) I can relate to this in that I used to love watching TV static. There is something very calming about it. In fact, back when I used to work in Cubesville, there was a youtube video that simply played 10 hours of tv static, which I would blast into my headphones to drown out the sound of my chubby co-workers making disgusting noises as they gobbled up the unhealthy snacks provided to keep them happy, well-fed and productive cubefarm animals.

From the poem, good night day dreams:

the radio plays mozart
the tv plays static
while she sits on her bed
and reads flowers in the attic

That’s actually my favorite line from the book and sounds like my kind of afternoon.

Arzate frequently makes use of unconventional structuring in his poems, the sort of which would annoy reactionaries and traditionalists in the lit world. Being that I can’t stand those types of people, I perversely enjoyed these deviations all the more. Some poems consist merely of a single sentence, phrased as a question. There is also a poem titled “Reflection Text” in which all of the writing is reversed, requiring a mirror to read unless you’re one of the doppelgangers in Journey to the Far Side of the Sun. Another poem I relate to in this collection is Brad, which briefly chronicles a person receiving wrong number phone calls from a woman and being disappointed when the calls stop coming. There are lonely points in a man’s life (particularly a reclusive writer or artist’s life) when human contact is so minimal that even the slightest, superficially pathetic “romantic” interaction or empty fantasy can be gratifying.

the sky is black and blue like a battered child very much reminds me of 90s zine poetry, both in tone and style. It has a pre-internet quality to it that’s difficult to put into words, but one which someone my age will instantly pick up on. Even though Ben Arzate appears to be about ten years younger than me and firmly within the millennial demographic, this strikes me as a precociously Generation X book. Arzate’s refreshingly not trying to save the world, fight social injustice or do much of anything here. Still, the sky is black and blue like a battered child succeeds in punching above its slim weight.

For more info:
the sky is black and blue like a battered child on Amazon

Ben Arzate’s blog:
http://dripdropdripdropdripdrop.blogspot.com/

Little Fevers – Beaches

littlefeverssingles

I came cross Little Fevers, a quartet from Minneapolis, randomly on Reddit a few years ago and was instantly hooked by their song Apple Tree. I don’t know whether they’ve released anything recently, but they are still out there performing and going strong and as far as I’m concerned the stuff they put out already is memorable enough to cement them with a fine indie legacy. Their music finds that sweet spot in indie pop that balances between retro and contemporary aesthetics. One of their songs, Beaches(from the release, Singles) offers a great example of this. It has a slightly folk quality but with a touch of innocence and cuteness, pushing it closely toward the category of Twee Pop. Singer Lucy Michelle has a voice that seems tailor made for this genre. You simply could not ask for vocals more pleasant to listen to than these. Had Beaches or Apple Tree or any of their other jams been released in the early to mid 2000s, everyone I know would have been listening to them (or at least heard of the group.) Nowadays, the scene for this style of music is not as large, but that doesn’t mean this band doesn’t deserve to stand out just the same.

For more info:
http://www.little-fevers.com/

Echosmith – Cool Kids

Echomith_coolkids4

As someone who strives to live in as much of a bubble as humanly possible within the modern world (and without  adopting the Ted Kaczynski or Amish lifestyle,) I struggle to block out most contemporary pop music in the moments where I find myself in environments where avoiding it is inescapable (such as the fitting rooms at department stores.) It was some such moment in some such place a year or two ago that I first heard Echosmith’s Cool Kids. I was instantly mesmerized by the synths, which had an unusually authentic 80’s sound at a time when such homage is paid typically in lip-service-surface-level, superficial ways (in pop music anyway, with indie subcultural genres like vaporwave it’s another story.)  The synths in Cool Kids though are not even so much retro,  but retro-futurist, living up to the dreamlike visions of what futuristic pop music would be like.  If this sanguine inter dimensional ambient journey to sanctuary is disrupted by anything,  it’s the lyrics, which are a little too cliche’ to be deserving of an otherwise cerebral song like this. I mean do we really need these tired bromides like “I wish that I could be like the cool kids cause all the cool kids they seem to fit in”? They seem like the lyrics that would play during the contrived emotional scenes on one of those lame, self-important, virtue signaling teen shows like 13 Reasons Why. This is not really a knock on the band’s singer, Sydney Sierota, who’s probably the best thing to happen to pop music since even before Taylor Swift. Sydney’s pretty and unassumingly charismatic without coming off like a tryhard or giving off a lot of phony attitude, and her charming, hypnotic vocals elevate the overall atmosphere of the song in a way that seems irreplaceable. I can’t really tell if she’s a bonafide avant garde “hipster” or one of those basic girls that just looks the part of an American Apparel employee (circa mid-2000s,) but I’m leaning toward the former. As one gets older, it become more difficult to differentiate between teenage social groups, as the previous referential signals become obsolete, and one is no longer privy to the new tells.

Anyway, whenever I was in this particular department store, I would look forward to this jam coming on, and I still do. As I’m perusing the sale racks looking to score some Tommy Hilfiger V-neck sweaters to be worn semi-ironically,  the addition of this song provides the missing piece of the puzzle in completion of the ultimate mall ambient experience. Cool Kidsis one of the best pop songs in recent memory, which I realize may not seem like a very high bar to meet, so let me just emphasize that I think it’s really something else.

Treasure Mammal – Missed Connections

treasuremammal

I first met Abe from Treasure Mammal around 2002-2003 and briefly lived with him at a house known for late night pool parties in Tempe, Arizona. Before he had started Treasure Mammal, he had been in a number of more conventional and “serious” indie rock bands. Despite being a multi-talented and gifted musician, he probably found standard indie rock fare to be a rather stifling and boring endeavor. He was always the life of the party and someone with Four-Loko tier levels of energy, and so Treasure Mammal turned out to be the perfect creative outlet for him. Anyway, I didn’t intend for this to sound like an obituary and am happy to observe that 15 years later, Treasure Mammal is still around, even as a zillion other Phoenix bands have come and gone.

Treasure Mammal has always differed from other indie “fun” or “humor” bands in that usually these types of groups use theatrics, costumes and funny gimmicks as a substitute for musical ability. In Treasure Mammal’s case though, Abe is actually a very skilled and accomplished musician, who just so happens to prefer to let loose and engage in this kind of wild chicanery. Another thing which distinguishes Treasure Mammal from similar bands was the use of top quality recording and production. While most people would have been content to throw some crap together and record it on 4 track, Treasure Mammal worked on their releases with some of the top recording engineers in the valley (Mike Hissong, Ryan Breen, etc.) Nowadays, almost anyone can make a near radio quality recording (production-wise anyway) with the software available, but Treasure Mammal was insisting on the very best studio production even 15 years ago.

Over the years, Treasure Mammal has had a knack for capitalizing on faddish catch phrases as they become part of the popular lexicon, quickly turning them into songs while their usage is still fairly prominent among the public. Examples of this are Best Friends Forever, Spring Break, and Real TalkThe most recent example of this is the jam, Missed Connections, (from the 2015 album I will Cut You With My EBT Card) which appears to be  a musical satirization of  the kinds of bizarre messages one might frequently see in the Missed Connections section of Craigslist…and it’s epic.

Seriously, this track is awesome.  It combines subtle, ironic humor with an excellent and catchy  pop song. The chorus, where the female vocals kick in (featuring singer Lonna Kelley,)  channels its inner Olivia Newton John in the sense that it is simply magical. The style of the song blends 80s synthpop with avant garde spoken word.  Though it isn’t meant to be taken seriously,  Missed Connections  could be interpreted as a social commentary on the empty desperation that animates these kinds of classified ads.  I assume most people read these ads for amusement, but what about the ones that write them… and do so earnestly, without even a hint of trolling or irony? Who are they? What do they look like? What kind of low point are they at in their lives? There’s something deeper about contemporary society and atomization in this super fun time tune, whether anyone cares or not.

Like many of Treasure Mammal’s previous songs, one would easily envision this becoming a viral, chart topping hit. It’s one of those songs where you tragically muse to yourself, “I can’t believe that dumbass Travie McCoy ‘I wanna be a Billionaire’ song managed to become popular, and yet this crown jewel of a jam isn’t.”

 

Phteven Universe

phteven

Phteven Universe is new self-titled cassette release which is also available in digital format. From the delightfully snazzy cover, you might think this is just a simple vaporwave album, but it is actually a little more avant garde and experimental, even tad dark. The vocals unexpectedly utilize an effect that makes them sound literally demonic, in that late 80s, early 90s horror movie kind of way. The song titles are rather unconventional. Some of them are roman numerals (with a few missing in sequence.) There’s a nonexistent 8th track that’s just titled ??? The final track is curiously titled Fuck Off Melissa. There must be a story behind that somewhere, and I’d like to hear it.

The album opens with some wildlife bird chirping sounds, not unlike what you’d hear in the nature area outside The Flamingo casino is Las Vegas. It soon transitions into more standard vaporwave fare, with some 80s piano pop instrumental driving the mix. S u n d a y is an example of a song that you think is going to be straightforward synthwave, until the demonic dream sequence vocals make an appearance and you realize you’re dealing with something slightly darker and more abstract. The abrupt alternation between cute, cheerful and dark and depressing is a recurring theme in the album. Perhaps it’s a subconscious illustration of the dual lives people lead as animephiliacs, which attract people drawn to a kind of cutesy childlike innocence they wish to recover, while also harboring dark thoughts, which lurk below but are ever prone to resurface. The last song, Fuck Off Melissa almost even sounds like industrial music, reminiscent of stuff like Nine Inch Nails. My favorite song on the album is X (yeah that’s right, Roman numeral 10.) It’s just smooth and ambient, with just the right pacing throughout.

Anyway, this is an interesting cassette release to say the least, and one which provides more than enough content and aesthetic to be worth purchasing at the measly $3 price tag.

For more info:
https://choamcharity.bandcamp.com/album/phteven-universe

The Cucumbers – My Boyfriend

thecucumbers

One largely forgotten entertainment relic of the 80’s (that I was huge fan of) is the show Braingames, on HBO. It was an educational, animated program which featured puzzles and encylopedic trivia, presented in a uniquely creative manner. I don’t remember anything particularly offensive, but the show often used mildly caustic and cheesy humor of the sort you would not really see in more sanitized and watered-down “kids” programs of today’s atmosphere. That’s a subject for another day though.

One of the episodes had a brief vignette called “Memory Rock,” where they show clips of a band performing, and you had to remember things about the group, such as what they were wearing, how many members etc. For this segment they actually used a real band, The Cucumbers, and their college radio hit song, My Boyfriend. This song is archetypically 80s awesome and soooo catchy, I have to wonder how many additional fans they got even from this obscure Braingames placement. It’s catchy enough that I frequently find myself jokingly singing this song to my girlfriend (which annoys her,) even though it’s titled My Boyfriend and features a female lead vocalist. They redid the song a few years later for an album, adding some synth and changing the section where the guy sings solo to one where the female vocals are out front. However, I think the original version (the one heard in Braingames,) which appeared on an EP released on Fake Doom Records in 1983, is superior. It’s an abstract postulation, and I can’t really pinpoint the reason why, but the sound just has so much more vitality. My Boyfriend is one of the best relatively-obscure-yet-memorable jams of the 1980’s, and The Cucumbers are actually still around! Check them out.

http://www.thecucumbers.net/

Conscious – Ups & Downs of Love

upsanddowns

Released on Valentine’s Day, Ups & Downs of Love is a new mixtape from a Buffalo, NY based hip hop artist going by the name Conscious. As the title suggests, the songs thematically alternate between the high, euphoric aspects of love and the downtrodden episodes of heartbreak and depression. The production quality here is pretty good, though I prefer the vocal effects on some tracks more than others. Let Me In particularly stands out as one of the best tracks on here, with the vocals coming through smoothly and crisply and not tinkered with very much. That’s the point in listening to this where I felt like, “Wow, this guy really has something here.”

As far as the instrumental backing, the final track You & Me is my favorite. It features a bouncy, dreamlike synth beat, reminiscent of video game music. This mixtape fuses elements of hip hop, R&B and pop. Conscious seems like he’s on the right track with this mixtape. Artistically, creating a themed album in which the songs act as components within an overall structure which itself is part of the art, is a good move. It adds a dimension of vision and thoughtfulness that you don’t often see in any plain old mixtape.

For more info:
http://hyperurl.co/uv640k